Do It!

KP

House of Wings on Holloway Road, the new home of soca-trance. Photo by Paul B. Davis

T2. Photo by Queenie

We couldn’t make it to the MOBOs this year. We didn’t go last year either. In fact, we’ve never been. The MOBOs are shit. They represent a large chunk of what is wrong with the world today. Okay, that’s not true, but they could have at least chucked something to a grime MC to give the scene a little hope. The Dizzee award for best male doesn’t count, btw. Diz is trying so hard to distance himself from grime that if you mentioned the word to him he’d probably pretend he had no idea what you were talking about. We heard that earlier in the year the Metro offered to pay £3,000 to get him on the cover of RWD magazine as part of the promotional budget for the Get Loaded in the Park festival (which Dylan was playing and apparently got a £60,000 fee for) but he refused to let them go ahead. The whole anti-grime thing might be working out for Dizzee, but it’s not going so well for Kano. We didn’t see one good review of his new album. Not one. Anywhere. If he doesn’t send Kate Nash back to her imaginary pie and mash shop in the countryside and start working with all the talented MCs he’s turned his back on, we can’t see his career lasting much longer. On a less dire tip, one positive trend we’ve noticed in the past little while in rap is the increasing use of ecstasy. If you caught our interview with B.O.B last month you would have read him talk about how pill-popping has become de rigeur for basically everyone below the Mason-Dixon Line. This blatant drugginess has definitely made its mark on club shit. These days you’ve got club tunes like KP’s “Bean Pop” in which he gets all the girls in the club to do a little move where they mime throwing a pill in their mouth. Sporty-O and Goldmouf’s “Skittles” is another good one that’s all about spending the entire weekend high and feeding girls pills as a fun way of getting laid. We don’t know if you can really call this kind of thing hip-hop any more. It’s more like the soundtrack to getting totally retarded and doing funny dances. The biggest one this year was probably the crank dance. There were songs like “Crank Dat Spidaman” by Crank Squad, “Crank Dat Batman” by the Pop it off Boyz, “Crank Dat Jump Rope” by Eraser Klick, and also “Crank My Rocket” by Playa C da Great, who invented the whole thing. Somehow, Soulja Boy came and got big with his version, which wasn’t even the best one. On the other end of the E’d-out Southern rap vibe is the melodic, trancey production that we’re hearing a lot. We first noticed this sound on last year’s epochal Trap Squad and DJ Scream mixtape. Nowadays we’re talking about labels like Paper Route Records and Slow Motion Soundz out of Huntsville, Alabama. We’re so excited about this stuff that we are going to be dropping our own mixtape featuring a lot of it in the near future and getting our buddy DJ Brains to handle a good chunk of the production. We spent the night of the MOBOs at his studio near the House of Wings chicken shop on Holloway Road checking out lots of new tracks. Brains has also started making synthed-out, trancey soca tunes at the behest of the Trinidadian dude who runs the shop. Look out for those soon. If you’re not too familiar with soca, you should check the bananas Ghislain Poirier remix of Bunji Garlin and JMC Triveni’s “Doi Festival” or anything by Machel Mantano and Destra Garcia. One final piece of hip-hop news: DJ Smallz’s new tape The Future of Florida is off the hook. The production is flawless from start to finish and it’s filled with lots of talented up and coming rappers. There’s one song that takes the posse cut to another level—it’s 16 minutes long and has verses from 30 MCs. It’s certainly better than anything coming from fellow Floridian DJ Khaled, who seems too busy watching Troy with a bottle of Johnson’s baby oil and his trousers round his ankles to realise what’s going on (GIANT NO HOMO). We’ll be the first to admit that niche can be about as cheesy as music gets, but we can’t get enough of it. When we come across a good track, it’s like hearing chunks of Groove Chronicles records and the better bits of the Todd Edwards back catalogue remixed with massive squelchy garage basslines. As well as the stuff we recommended a few issues back, you need to check out “Angel in Discuise” by Nastie Boi (who was obviously not paying attention when they were teaching people the basics of spelling in primary school), “Barbwire” by DJ Rekless and anything by TS7 or Paleface. If you want to keep updated on the best new stuff, check out DJ Rekless’s weekly show on Rinse FM for all your not-too-cheesy bassline needs. After months of hype, T2’s “Heartbroken” was recently signed to Universal for a pretty decent amount of money, so expect a chart invasion some time very, very soon. We’re still trying to sort out London’s first niche night, so start polishing your Rockport loafers now and sit tight for details next month. PRANCEHALL & EASYCHORD